Something
of grime’s skewiff quality is captured in the title of this
compilation. “Road” is grime-speak for “street”. On “Destruction VIP,”
one of the killer tracks here, Kano proclaims “from lamp post to lamp
post/We run the road”.The intent is gangsta menace, an assertion of
territorial might, but perhaps even to English ears, the quaint phrasing
makes the boast fall a little short. American rap fans would most
likely crack up on hearing the line. No wonder Grime’s modest fanbase in
the United States consists almost entirely of white Anglophile
hipsters.

If Grime doesn’t have a hope in hell with
American’s hip hop heartland, it can console itself with the knowledge
that right now it’s got the edge over “the real thing”. The records
sound cheap’n’nasty next to US rap’s glossy production values, but
Grime’s way with rhythm and sound is far more jaggedly futuristic. More
crucially, Grime has a feeling of desperation that American hip hop has
largely lost. Individual rappers may still follow rags-to-riches
trajectories, but as a collective enterprise, hip hop has won. It
dominates pop culture globally. The music oozes a sense of entitlement,
something you can also see in that lordly look of blasé disdain that’s
de rigeur in rap videos nowadays. In America, rising MCs rhyme about the
luxury goods and opulent lifestyle they don’t yet have because it’s
also so much more plausible, within reach. The path is well-trodden--not
just selling millions of records, but diversifying into movies,
starting their own clothing lines, bringing their neighbourhood crew up
with them once they’ve made it.

As a sound, Grime is
still very much an underdog, and so its fantasies of triumph and living
large are much more precarious, and affecting. There’s a definite
ceiling to how much money can be made on the underground scene. Selling
500 singles is a good result, shifting a thousand is a wild success,
and even hawking your white labels direct to London’s specialist stores
with a huge mark-up won’t generate that much cash. At the same time,
nobody in Grime, not even Dizzee, has really mapped out a crossover
career path yet. Indeed, making that transition from pirate radio to Top of the Pops is
risky. Take So Solid Crew, who got to #1 with “21 Seconds” a few years
back. Their second album flopped and their rep on the street (or should I
say "road"?) is now non-existent.

You
can hear all this in the music, in those pinched, scrawny voices--the
sound of energy squeezing itself through the tiniest aperture of
opportunity and grabbing for a chance that most likely will prove to be a
mirage. All of the guys (plus occasional gal) on Run The Road already
feel like legends in their own minds. Standout track “Chosen One” by
Riko & Target distils that sense of destiny and destination.
Over sampled movie-soundtrack strings that evoke a kind of stunted
majesty, Riko imagines himself as a star on satellite TV, then offers
counsel that applies equally to other aspiring MCs and to everyday
street soldiers dealing with adversity: “Stay calm/Don’t switch/Use
composure, blood/Use your head to battle through, ca’ you are the chosen
one.”

American rappers, once they’ve made it, can
sound like bullies and tyrants when they reel out the same old lyrical
scenarios: humiliating haters, discarding women like used condoms.
From Grime MCs, the endless threats and boasts, the big-pimpin'
postures, somehow seem more forgivable. When Grime MCs batter rivals
real and imaginary, they’re really battening down their own self-doubt,
chasing away the spectre of failure and anonymity with each verbal blow.
Sure, the misogyny and gun talk can be hard to stomach. “Cock Back,”
one of 2004’s biggest grime anthems, is a Terror Danjah riddim
constructed from the click and crunch of small arms being cocked. Over
this bloodcurdling beat, D Double E spits couplets like “Think you’re a
big boy ‘cos you go gym?/Bullets will cave your whole face in.”
Outnumbered twenty to one, the female MCs give as good as their gender
usually gets. No Lay, on “Unorthodox Daughter”, promises to “put you in
BUPA” and warns “soundboy I can have your guts for garters/turn this
place into a lyrical slaughter”.

Probably the best grime collection yet, Run The Road is also touted as the genre’s first major label compilation. Actually, a Warners sub-label released one in 2002, Crews Control.
But its contents were more like proto-grime, the beats mostly 2step and
UK garage, and the vibe far more playful and genial, courtesy of now
almost forgotten crews like Heartless and Genius. Their brand of
boisterous bonhomie and quirky humour is in short supply on Run The Road.
One exception: Lady Sovereign’s “Cha Ching”, on which the
squeaky-voiced “white midget” announces “It’s Ms Sovereign, the titchy
t’ing/Me nah have fifty rings/but I’ve got fifty things/To say/In a
cheeky kind of way/Okay?”

Bruza sounds
comic, injecting the Cockney into “Cock Back” with his lurching, Arthur
Mullard-like delivery and lines like “you’ll be left in ruins for your
wrong-doings”. But content-wise, he’s “brutal and British”, reeling off
the usual list of inventively gory acts of revenge. Run The Road 's
brand of laughter is strictly the gloating, vindictive kind. Hence the
eerie digital cackle, like an evil, leering cyber-goblin, used by
Terror Danjah as a motif on all his productions (on this comp, “Cock
Back” and Shystie’s “One Wish”). Compared to even a few years ago, Grime
seems like it has less scope for goofing about now. There’s a deadly
seriousness in the air, possibly influenced by the sense that there’s
more at stake--a real chance of making it, now the majors are cautiously
sniffing around and signing up MCs like Kano.

If Grime
ever does makes it, collectively--achieving the sort of dominance that
American rap enjoys--these last three years of the genre’s emergence
will be looked back on as the golden age, the old skool. Make no
mistake, the MCs on this compilation-- Kano, D Double E, Riko,
Sovereign, Dizzee, Wiley--are our equivalents to Rakim, Chuck D, Ice
Cube, Nas, Jay-Z. To twist slightly the words of another rapper from
that American pantheon, Notorious BIG: if you (still) don’t know, get to
know.